Cleaning Up the Creek Bed Last week we received notice that the county was planning to come in this month to do the cleaning out of the creek (or as they like to call it, the "drain"). As you can see in the pictures, we're in a dry period and there's currently no water in it. Included in the plan was to take down trees and plants all along one side so they could get their equipment ...
The Swan Creek at Crossing Hedgerows Sanctuary 💧 How does the fact that you are a water being relate to your health and well being? What are some things you can do to support the function of water in your body? 💧Learn also how water is related to your emotions and the importance of embodiment practices in connecting to love. 💧Gather a magical berry found at the sanctuary to take home to use for ...
In July of 2023, Brennah made a post here about the importance of our native button bushes to the pollinators at Crossing Hedgerows. Of course it has beautiful photos, including the incredible blossoms: https://www.patreon.com/posts/86598986 button bush - after the flowers have faded It's hard to do justice with pictures to show the size this particular one has grown to now, but it has grown quite large indeed! And I want to give a ...
Dan and Brennah have been working on getting the new bridge built and in place. The planks are being put on today, and the new bridge is going to be a little wider than the last one. 👏 It should be done soon! https://youtube.com/shorts/EBaIDf4Hyf4?feature=share Woohoo!! 🎉 🎉 I will be sending out the announcement for our Beltaine event soon, so stay tuned for that! And thank you all for your support! Jean and crew
We had some beautiful sun today making the Swan Creek sparkle! And to update you on the bridge, a while back Dan went out to see what it would take to move it back in place and discovered one end of it had started to rot. (And it wasn’t even the end in the water!). So he and Brennah have come up with a design to build a new one, which they are planning on doing ...
A new native plant that has appeared at the Sanctuary this year is the Blue Flag Iris. It grows in wet areas, often along the edges of water. So unsurprisingly it has begun growing along the edge of the creek bed, not far from the beautiful buttonbush, another amazing plant which I will highlight in a later post.Blue Flag Iris provides nectar for native pollinators, and is also forage for muskrats. It likewise attracts hummingbirds, which we already ...
For our work day last week, we did some clean-up in an area of the woods where the previous owners seemed to have had a dump. Though the Cavanaughs have been pulling trash out of that area continuously since moving to the property, it has been a huge project. And it mainly needs to be done in the early spring, after the snow melts, but before everything gets covered by the understory plant growth. So it was ...
I thought you all might like to see a picture of how wet it gets in the spring around here. This was as close as I could get to the creek yesterday. Some of the recent days previous to yesterday, I couldn't even get within sight of the creek. But did you know that there are some native plants and animals that require a habitat of regular flooding in order to survive? We have identified ...
On Monday I had the opportunity to speak at a public meeting of County Drain Commissioners for Wayne, Monroe, and Washtenaw counties regarding the clearing of the North Branch of the Swan Creek. This is the creek which runs through the Sanctuary land, eventually emptying into Lake Erie. The creek runs through these three counties, and the commissioners were asking for public comment from the land owners whose properties would be affected by a proposal to clear ...
Trail to the Pond Site by Brennah Cavanaugh Photography LLCThe snow storm we had earlier this month left the shrubs and plants so weighed down that some of the trails became almost impassable. But not completely so, as Dan found when he decided to crawl through because our dog was so insistent on going on his usual walk! Photos by Dan Cavanaugh - Walking the DogI wanted to share these pictures of the Sanctuary in all its winter ...
"One of the recurring philosophical questions is: 'Does a falling tree in the forest make a sound when there is no one to hear?' Which says something about the nature of philosophers, because there is always someone in a forest. It may only be a badger, wondering what that cracking noise was." ~ Terry Pratchett snow covered trees by Brennah Cavanaugh Photography LLC Lately Brennah has been noticing something stealthily swimming away ...
June 2021 The last week has brought us an excess of rain and caused the creek to overflow and the water table to swell. Fortunately yesterday there was no rain, so the water went down a bit. We were able to slosh through ankle deep water on the trail back to the creek and take the pictures you see here. The bridge was just barely above the water and it is flooded on both sides, throughout the ...